Austrian Inheritance Law

The first practical step when applying for an Austrian Grant of Probate is completing the Todesfallaufnahme questionnaire In the previous posts How to Access Assets in Austria? and How to deal with Assets in Austria we have already explained the relevant Austrian succession laws and probate regulations. In this new post, we show what practical step needs to be taken in order to start the Austrian probate procedure. Contact the competent Austrian probate court Under…

British Testator owned a Bank Account in Austria: Will an English Grant be accepted in Austria? No, unfortunately, it will not. If a British person who owns assets in Austria dies, the personal representative needs to obtain a separate Austrian grant of probate. The English grant is rather worthless in Austria, just as an Austrian (or German or French etc) grant of probate is not being accepted within the United Kingdom, because the UK has…

Probate Proceedings in Austria are very different from those in Germany If a decedent who was not resident in Austria owned any assets in Austria at the time of his or her death, this Austrian Estate can only be accessed after going through formal Austrian Probate. Neither an English Grant of Probate nor a German Certificate of Inheritance will enable the executors or beneficiaries to access the Austrian assets, because Austrian banks, brokers, insurance companies…

One-Day Workshop for English Wills & Probate Solicitors Clients these days often own foreign assets, have close relatives (i.e. future beneficiaries) who live abroad or even move to a non-UK country themselves. In all of these cases, a "standard" English last will and testament does not adequately cover all the client's needs. Foreign IHT consequences, for example, are often completely ignored. As is the fact that many European jurisdictions do not recognise an English trust…

Children of British Expats in Europe often are entitled to the Estate without even knowing it. EU Succession Laws are full of surprises. British expats who are resident in Europe, let's say in Germany, Austria, France or Spain, rarely are aware that ever since the introduction of the EU Succession Regulation (August 2015), if they pass away while being resident in that country, the Inheritance and Succession Laws of that country of residence will most…

... the surviving spouse may be in for an unpleasant surprise Since 2015, according to the rules of the EU Succession Regulation, the criterion "last habitual residence" of the deceased determines which succession laws apply to the estate. If, for instance, a British national moves to Spain, Germany or France and later on dies there, then the respective national succession laws, i.e. Spanish, German or French succession laws, do apply (except with regard to UK…

Testators with assets abroads Why would an English or Scottish solicitor even give a toss about German or Spanish inheritance tax laws or about French or Italian forced heirship rules? Well, for starters, in order to avoid the client's survivors yelling at him/her some years later because they ran into probate or/and foreign tax problems abroad. Or, and this is of course the far better reason, to really impress your client with advice on international…